Some general comments on recent Trek Lit

[Tropical_Night]

Having gotten bored re-watching episodes to the point I know each word before it comes out of the characters mouth I got back into novels, in the form of ebooks..just some general observations....

1. When I was reading the new Borg invasion saga in Greater than the Sum and Destiny etc I admit in parts I was thinking "for Gods sake ever since Pale Moon Light it seems to be a compeittion among some writers to see who can put the darkest possible spin on trek out there, race you to the bottom!!" but it actually ended up being done very well. I did wonder if Sicko would have kept on crew members who mutinied...considering one crew member betraying him led to him threatening to gas a dozen planets...I doubt it, and I thought that Picard really pussed out on that, Kadohata etc should have went the way of Counselor T'lana.

2. The number of characters in the newer novels is starting to give me a headache. NOBODY WILL STAY STILL!!!! This may sound silly, but I have a hard enough time picturing what some ships like the Aventine and Titan look like on the inside etc without having to keep track of so many new characters as well..and I know if you have Riker on the Titan you have to have a new crew and characters etc and they have tried to bring familiar faces in when possible (Simon Tarsis etc) but jesus..sometimes...headache..I keep confusing the doc and engineer on Titan when picturing them in my head for some reason...even tho they are nothing alike. I also think in the post-nemises novels they should have settled on a TNG crew pretty quickly, it got on my nerves how characters kept coming in and out every 30 seconds, how many security cheifs did the E go through during 2-3 novels alone?

3. DS9 was my favorite series..and the relaunch has bastardized it.

-To be fair, the fault starts with the "what the fuck was that" ending to DS9 when they scatterd popular characters to the winds for no logical reason...but they could have brought Sisko and O'Brian back (if they can kill Janeway they can do that), tho most novels were good (Abyss, Avatar, Mission Gamma series etc) the problem started later...

-They started an interesting premise with Odo and Laas being in charge of the Dominion then ...zap...nothing, did i miss a novel where they returned to that? it just seemed to go...

-Was there a single fan who liked the mirror universe of DS9? The psudo-lesbian Kira, the complete illogic of a Bajoran being in charge of a major outpost of a Klingon-Cardassian Alliance? Yet the relaunch of DS9 just meandered off into this unvierse and I stopped reading it. They took the two least popular elements of DS9, based on most I've talked to, the prophets and mirror universe, merged them and diverted the relaunch into them...why...seriously we got a MAJOR overdose of all that prophets crap in S7 of DS9 I'm so sick of it...

4. I tried some Titan novels, and I'm on the second Typhon Pact book now which seems ok, but I just don't think the Troi and Riker characters were ever really interesting, during the show and definitely during the movies, so I suppose they're doing the best they can with them.

5. I loved every book in the new borg invasion saga, and the Typhon pact books seem ok...what I really wanna get my hands on is the third TP book, I'm dying to know if it undoes any of the damage that mirror universe-prophets shite did to DS9.

6. I loved The New Frontier...but..ugh...Dave...Dave...what did you do to it???? There was nothing wrong with one ship one crew! I've enough hassle keeping track of the Enterprise E going through new characters like its TNG season 1 in Engineering, why did you have to break the crew up into two sepearte yet identical ships then break THAT into a Starbase, and two identical ships with separate crews...ugh...it was fine before!
I wasn't bored, and there were other ways to keep things interesting.
It's still good...I just wish he hadn't broken everyone up, the Soleta leaving thing also bugged me, and its making things suffer, I'm currently struggling to get through Treason, its bookmarked and i switch between it and A stich In Time.

As a general message to any writers reading, I love when you get your teeth into properly developing a core set of characters, and maybe a few secondary characters, having a constant influx of new characters cheapens the whole thing and makes some novels a total headache to read ("wait which one is he'/she again?").



Currently reading A Stitch In Time which I'd skipped earlier, then going back to some TNG ministries I also skipped:
Maximum Warp
Genesis Wave
and the Double Helix


Any major recommendations for what to add to that list are welcome, kinda not sure what to read next.

 

[MNM]

Man I was about to start a thread on the recent Trek lit. you saved me the trouble.

I'm underwhelmed. Very much so.

I wont spoil the Paths of Disharmony book, but suffice to say what happens there happens and I cant bring myself to care.

My interest peaked and ended with Destiny I think. I can count on one hand the ST books I have enjoyed since then. I didnt like the new Voyager books, the DS9 relaunch has run completely out of steam, the Typhon Pact was formed, a bunch of states hostile to the Federation, an idea I liked and yet I find the books to range from ok to unfinishable they were so poor (I'm looking at Seize the Fire).

This is actually a terrible shame for me, even just a couple of years ago I really enjoyed the feeling of Trek Lit, looking forward to new books, seeing how the universe unfolded, but there's been too much disappointment for me in terms of what was delivered. Other people may have really enjoyed these books and thats cool, but I havent.

...really, I'm out. Not for me anymore. I might pop back if the Ascendant stuff ever gets a book or an Aventine book gets published, but otherwise I doubt it.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ This is the state where I feel I am in right now. Nothing really has me excited. I'm excited and intrigued about Christopher's DTI book but other than that...no so much.

 

[Tropical_Night]

I don't agree with what people are saying about Dax, I quite like the Aventine, Bowers and that whole part of the recent story. She was a dull as dishwater character in DS9 and something had to be done with her, as for her sudden jump in rank, is her going from Lt Commander to Captain any less absurd that the way beyond the bounds of reason notion of a 4th year Cadet being promoted to captain of a brand new ship? People seemed to buy that bs really easily. New Movie was great but that ending....anyway...

I forgot to mention Voyager. I liked the Mosset stuff, Full Circle started to bore me really fast and I had to stop it, because I was annoyed enough with DS9's going back to the whole mystical prophets crap and now here was Voyager going into Klingon mystical crap as well...no..just no! ENOUGH , its a science fiction show, I don't want to hear about sacred relics, destiny, predestination, magic child saviors or any of that stuff.

I did go on to read Unworthy though...and people writing the next DS9 novels pay attention, for it rescued the Voyager relaunch from going the same way of DS9. I love the idea of project full circle, going back to the Delta Quadrant to explore, except with a proper fleet this time, Slipstream giving them the ability to get home, potential for pissed off crew from the older days on Voyager who are not too happy about being back in the Delta Quadrant...theres so much they could do with this, I'd really like to see them revisit some of the DQ species that were pretty good Villans but didn't get much exploration...Hirogen, Videens with a re-infected Phage, 8472.

I think unless they fix DS9 (and I really hope the new TP novel has, I havn't read it yet) I think the Voyager relaunch is the best hope. Oh and make Eden a commodore, give her those 5 silver pips! (yep...I know how many pips a commodore has...what can I say I was really bored one night and was surfing around memory beta...), she is in command of a fleet afterall don't cop out with an honorary fleet captain title, we havn't had a commodore in trek in ages, be good nostalgia!

 

[neogothboy74]

TNG / Titan: The large & revolving casts can be confusing, yet once I got into them I had far less trouble than you did - and I appreciated the largely non-huminoid or non-human characters in Titan. One thing that always bugged me with Trek was that the majority of characters were always human - DS9 had more aliens than the rest, which was one of the reasons I liked it so much.

Voyager: I've not read 'Full Circle' / 'Unworthy' so I can't comment on those, but I don't like the Klingon prophecy stuff myself - mostly because I think the episodes of Voyager that they spring from mostly suck and it's hard for me to invest in them as a result...plus I'm less invested in the Voyager characters (because they weren't really very consistent in the series) so it's harder for me to care about them.

New Frontier: I don't hate it. I think skipping ahead a few years was a mistake, or at least something that I thought was less enjoyable than living out those years with the characters could have been, but I've enjoyed the tales we've gotten. I do wish we'd get them more often though.

DS9 is my favorite series as well, but I loved the ending. It's my favorite ending in Trek because, well, it has an ending. Characters die. Characters leave. Characters change in rank. A couple is forged as another relationship ends. And the last thing I wanted when the post-series fiction started coming out was for all those characters to come back - it would cheapen the ending of the series IMO. If they came back we wouldn't have Ro on DS9 & Shar & Prynn & Vaughn and I love those characters just as much as the ones that left - plus we did see them all throughout the relaunch at some point or another.

As far as the Prophets storyline on DS9 - that too was one of my favorites. I'm not religious, but with the Bajorans I could understand their religion to a degree because I saw their gods and understood how they could be prophets. And that storyline carried throughout the entire run of the series and was very important - to ignore that in the books would feel odd.

The Mirror Universe I'm less fond of, yet it was a staple of the series that never really went anywhere...and the books kind of provide the pay off for that. I remember thinking they'd eventually have a finale that involved the Mirror Universe invading our universe or something but it never happened. The Mirror Universe storyline in the DS9 books also only really relates in a few titles - it's just that those titles were spread over so many years because of all kinds of problems behind the scenes - if they'd all been released in a single year and then they'd moved on I don't think people would react as negatively as they have. It's really not that bad. Plus the DS9 Mirror Universe storyline explained the truth about Illianna Ghemore which was something I did very much enjoy and had wanted them to explore in the tv series. I do agree that the DS9 Relaunch has sputtered out, but hopefully in the next few years we'll get some of that back.

 

[Sxottlan]

Having gotten bored re-watching episodes to the point I know each word before it comes out of the characters mouth.

Wow. I can't remember the last time I saw a full episode of any of the series. Maybe five years ago?

 

[JD]

Having gotten bored re-watching episodes to the point I know each word before it comes out of the characters mouth I got back into novels, in the form of ebooks..just some general observations....

1. When I was reading the new Borg invasion saga in Greater than the Sum and Destiny etc I admit in parts I was thinking "for Gods sake ever since Pale Moon Light it seems to be a compeittion among some writers to see who can put the darkest possible spin on trek out there, race you to the bottom!!" but it actually ended up being done very well. I did wonder if Sicko would have kept on crew members who mutinied...considering one crew member betraying him led to him threatening to gas a dozen planets...I doubt it, and I thought that Picard really pussed out on that, Kadohata etc should have went the way of Counselor T'lana.

I have to disagree with pretty much everything you say here. I don't really have a problem with Picard keeping the mutineers around. I though Christopher Bennett did a really good job of resolving all of that in GTTS

2. The number of characters in the newer novels is starting to give me a headache. NOBODY WILL STAY STILL!!!! This may sound silly, but I have a hard enough time picturing what some ships like the Aventine and Titan look like on the inside etc without having to keep track of so many new characters as well..and I know if you have Riker on the Titan you have to have a new crew and characters etc and they have tried to bring familiar faces in when possible (Simon Tarsis etc) but jesus..sometimes...headache..I keep confusing the doc and engineer on Titan when picturing them in my head for some reason...even tho they are nothing alike. I also think in the post-nemises novels they should have settled on a TNG crew pretty quickly, it got on my nerves how characters kept coming in and out every 30 seconds, how many security cheifs did the E go through during 2-3 novels alone?

I have to disagree here too. I love the fact that we've got so many series with all sorts of different characters. I really think the authors do a good job of keeping the characters unique enough that I'm able to keep them straight with very little trouble. The only point I do agree with you on is the constant changes to the E-E crew. They just kept introducing interesting characters who I got attached to, and then wrote them out by the next book. I actually thought we had finally settled on a crew by Losing the Peace, and then Kadohata left. I understand why it was done, it was a good move character wise. I just wish it didn't mean we have lose another interesting character.

3. DS9 was my favorite series..and the relaunch has bastardized it.

-To be fair, the fault starts with the "what the fuck was that" ending to DS9 when they scatterd popular characters to the winds for no logical reason...but they could have brought Sisko and O'Brian back (if they can kill Janeway they can do that), tho most novels were good (Abyss, Avatar, Mission Gamma series etc) the problem started later...

I thought the ending of DS9 was great, and the characters who they brought in were just as interesting as the ones they were replacing.

-They started an interesting premise with Odo and Laas being in charge of the Dominion then ...zap...nothing, did i miss a novel where they returned to that? it just seemed to go...

I doubt very much that it is completely done. They just got into the MU arc, and now the time jump. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dominion popped up somewhere in the near future.

-Was there a single fan who liked the mirror universe of DS9? The psudo-lesbian Kira, the complete illogic of a Bajoran being in charge of a major outpost of a Klingon-Cardassian Alliance? Yet the relaunch of DS9 just meandered off into this unvierse and I stopped reading it. They took the two least popular elements of DS9, based on most I've talked to, the prophets and mirror universe, merged them and diverted the relaunch into them...why...seriously we got a MAJOR overdose of all that prophets crap in S7 of DS9 I'm so sick of it...

I like the Prophets and the MU, and I enjoyed the Warpath/Fearful Symmetry/The Soul Key storyline. Obviously some fans must have liked that stuff since the kept going back to it in both the books and show. I must admit that I'm really surprised to hear you're a DS9 fan who didn't like the Prophets, that's a pretty major part of the show to dislike. I thought the stuff with the Prophets was some of the best parts of the show, but then again I also liked the religious stuff in BSG and Caprica so, I guess I'm a sucker for those kinds of stories.

4. I tried some Titan novels, and I'm on the second Typhon Pact book now which seems ok, but I just don't think the Troi and Riker characters were ever really interesting, during the show and definitely during the movies, so I suppose they're doing the best they can with them.

I actually really like both Riker and Troi.

5. I loved every book in the new borg invasion saga, and the Typhon pact books seem ok...what I really wanna get my hands on is the third TP book, I'm dying to know if it undoes any of the damage that mirror universe-prophets shite did to DS9.

Sadly, alot of people haven't been real happy with what the TP books have done to the DS9 characters. I'm only part of the way through Zero Sum Game myself, but I haven't had any big problems with it.

6. I loved The New Frontier...but..ugh...Dave...Dave...what did you do to it???? There was nothing wrong with one ship one crew! I've enough hassle keeping track of the Enterprise E going through new characters like its TNG season 1 in Engineering, why did you have to break the crew up into two sepearte yet identical ships then break THAT into a Starbase, and two identical ships with separate crews...ugh...it was fine before!
I wasn't bored, and there were other ways to keep things interesting.
It's still good...I just wish he hadn't broken everyone up, the Soleta leaving thing also bugged me, and its making things suffer, I'm currently struggling to get through Treason, its bookmarked and i switch between it and A stich In Time.

I do agree with you here.

 

[Starbreaker]

I can't remember most of the characters on the Aventine or Titan. The new Enterprise and DS9 characters are the ones that have been memorable to me.

I do like Vale and Sam Bowers though...

 

[Jono]

-They started an interesting premise with Odo and Laas being in charge of the Dominion then ...zap...nothing, did i miss a novel where they returned to that? it just seemed to go...

DS9 moved forward several years to sync up with the rest of the TNG era series, so no you haven't missed anything.

-Was there a single fan who liked the mirror universe of DS9?

There are many. On this board the last MU episode poll in the DS9 forum had more voters for them been a positive addition to the series than not.

The psudo-lesbian Kira,

Kirk was allowed to have a "captain's woman" so I don't see anything wrong with Mirror Kira been either bisexual or willing to be sexually manipulating to both men and women.

the complete illogic of a Bajoran being in charge of a major outpost of a Klingon-Cardassian Alliance?

What is so amazing about a Bajoran being in command of a mining station in orbit of a Bajoran world that is a member (and from what is hinted a willing member) of the Alliance?

DS9 is my favorite series as well, but I loved the ending. It's my favorite ending in Trek because, well, it has an ending. Characters die. Characters leave. Characters change in rank. A couple is forged as another relationship ends. And the last thing I wanted when the post-series fiction started coming out was for all those characters to come back - it would cheapen the ending of the series IMO. If they came back we wouldn't have Ro on DS9 & Shar & Prynn & Vaughn and I love those characters just as much as the ones that left - plus we did see them all throughout the relaunch at some point or another.

I feel the same.

No offense to the novel authors but the writers had no interest in what the novels might do. They saw that DS9 was ending, with the likelihood of a movie pretty much zero and the fact that the vast majority of viewers will never read a novel or comic, the writers did the right thing and wrap up the show for its audience.

I'm glad that the novels came along, there were still question. Primarily concerning what would happen to Sisko and if Bajor would join the Federation and the novels came through and offered up a possible conclusion to these remaining questions.

I must say that post - Unity I felt my interest in the novels start to wane, partly due to that I wasn't as interested in the MU section as I were in what was going to happen to the Dominion and the Ascendants and that the issues with authors and publishers saw that drawn out, which tended to unfairly magnify the issue. Nor have I got as much as I wanted from the TP involving the DS9 crew. Hopefully that gap we have will be filled at some point and I personally hope that some of my lost interest in the series will be renewed if it is.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Voyager: I've not read 'Full Circle' / 'Unworthy' so I can't comment on those, but I don't like the Klingon prophecy stuff myself - mostly because I think the episodes of Voyager that they spring from mostly suck and it's hard for me to invest in them as a result...plus I'm less invested in the Voyager characters (because they weren't really very consistent in the series) so it's harder for me to care about them.

Kirsten Beyer's books essentially ended the Klingon storyline, which I didn't like much myself. (It was part of the reason why I stopped reading the Voyager relaunch back in its early days.) Beyer does an excellent job in Full Circle, simutaneously bringing the old Christie Golden threads to a close while tying Voyager's story to Destiny and setting Chakotay and the others on an entirely new adventure. It was one of the three best Trek books I read last year, and might I add, she made me, no friend of Chakotay, care about his story. That continued in Unworthy.

Titan's large crew of strangers threw me off the first time I tried to read the series, but their appearances in the Destiny series coaxed me in. I'm currently reading the series through (currently on Sword of Damocles) and sometimes feel bewildered, but then I run into a familar character like Ree and feel grounded again. I latch on to a few characters (like Ree) while others remain in the background.

I just started getting back into the relaunches last year, and so far I'm enjoying myself. There have been one or two "Eh, that was OK" books, but most of them have been four- or five star reads, in my opinion. I'm currently reading Titan, and anticipate starting Vanguard this next month.

 

[Defcon]

^ I'm excited and intrigued about Christopher's DTI book but other than that...no so much.

Honestly? That's the one I look the least forward to since it seems to pander to Christopher's greatest weakness: his tendency to go into lecturing mode. That's fine and even appreciated in appropriate doses, but with all the temporal mechanics I fear a good chunk of the novel will be him lecturing about the science of time travel and destroy the flow of the narrative.

I'll read it and hope to be positively surprised, but my expectations aren't that high.

 

[VDCNI]

TNG - The pre Destiny Borg saga was mainly terrible (Greater Than The Sum was ok) but it's been fine from Destiny onwards. It would be nice to have a consistent crew for a while and really get to know them.

DS9 - Was loving this and then the Mirror Universe nonsense hit - After the first DS9 Mirror Universe story the producers clearly only kept bringing it back to give the actors some fun so I'm mystified why it was brought into the book series.

Voyager - the intitial relaunch produced some of the worst books ever released under the Trek banner. Full Circle was a massive improvement which for the most part Unworthy continued though I could do without the super evil hologram and it undermined Species 8472 even more than the TV show did.

Titan - The TP tie in aside these have mostly been strong books though I think they need more focus on a smaller number of characters and the diversity angle has been overdone. Oh and Tuvok adds nothing to these books whatsoever - put him back into Voyager.

Aventine - I love Dax but if the Aventine was destoyed killing everyone but her I wouldn't bat an eyelid. Just don't see the need for yet another ship.

New Frontier - Worked fine with one ship - not interested in the ever increasing universe of ships/space stations that PD insists on.

 

[Arpy]

I like that there are many diverse characters in the recent lit, but I wish they'd do a better job reminding me who they are. I DO NOT mean giving me an annoying summary of their arc the last time we saw them, but giving me a feel for who they...are as people now, and not just a neat pigeon-holed prefab character. Also, I wish they'd give better descriptions of the characters. The screen folk we know how they look, sound, their mannerisms, etc. The new folks are just a name, rank, species, a couple physical characteristics, and little else. I want to know these people - it helps me remember their arcs and care about their stories.

 

[UncleRogi]

My thinking is that I appreciate the efforts the Writers to condense the Canon to a single continuity that all can write in without stepping on toes. Much earlier Trek-lit went all over the place.

It's all Trek! That should be enough. I enjoy anything written lately because it gives a fresh breath to what we love, without recourse to the past.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd like to say that I love the bigger scope the various novel series' gives us. The new characters and locations give the Star Trek universe real depth - for example, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers got two or three mentions on-screen - in the books we get to read all about them and their adventures. Ditto the USS Excalibur, the Titan, the Stargazer etc.

I may not agree with all the creative choices made, and I thought some of the books were terrible - but I can say exactly the same for some of the episodes and movies over the years. I love Trek, and Treklit, for what it is.

 

[Admiral_Young]

@Defcon...I hear ya. There is a risk of that but I'm a sucker for time travel/concepts and have enjoyed his previous books so I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Christopher]

I did wonder if Sicko would have kept on crew members who mutinied...considering one crew member betraying him led to him threatening to gas a dozen planets...I doubt it, and I thought that Picard really pussed out on that, Kadohata etc should have went the way of Counselor T'lana.

Kadohata, T'Lana, and Leybenzon did not commit mutiny. Picard committed mutiny. He disobeyed the lawful orders of his direct superior, Admiral Nechayev. Kadohata and the others were obeying Nechayev's orders when they removed Picard from command. So Picard had no legal or ethical grounds to punish or remove those three officers, who technically did nothing wrong. Hell, if Picard's risky gambit hadn't worked, he would've been the one court-martialed and cashiered out of the service -- if enough of Starfleet had survived to hold a court-martial.

I also think in the post-nemises novels they should have settled on a TNG crew pretty quickly, it got on my nerves how characters kept coming in and out every 30 seconds, how many security cheifs did the E go through during 2-3 novels alone?

Well, that wasn't intentional. Resistance seemed to go through characters pretty quickly, but the cast introduced in Q&A was intended to be the new permanent crew. However, Before Dishonor took them in an unexpected direction that made it untenable to keep them around, so it became necessary to try again. Just the growing pains that sometimes crop up in a new or semi-new series.

6. I loved The New Frontier...but..ugh...Dave...Dave...what did you do to it???? There was nothing wrong with one ship one crew! I've enough hassle keeping track of the Enterprise E going through new characters like its TNG season 1 in Engineering, why did you have to break the crew up into two sepearte yet identical ships then break THAT into a Starbase, and two identical ships with separate crews...ugh...it was fine before!

Dave who? Are you trying to refer to Peter David?

I don't agree with what people are saying about Dax ... is her going from Lt Commander to Captain any less absurd that the way beyond the bounds of reason notion of a 4th year Cadet being promoted to captain of a brand new ship?

A better analogy is Will Riker. He went from lieutenant to getting his first offer for a captaincy in only slightly more time than it took for Ezri Dax to go from lieutenant to getting a battlefield promotion to captain.

An even better analogy is Jean-Luc Picard. He got his captaincy of the Stargazer the same way Ezri did -- by being the most senior officer left alive after the captain and first officer were killed in action. Picard had only been out of the Academy six years at that point; Ezri had approximately the same amount of experience when she became captain, if we assume she was fresh out of the Academy when we met her. I believe that it was a deliberate choice to have Ezri's ascension to the captaincy parallel Picard's.

^ I'm excited and intrigued about Christopher's DTI book but other than that...no so much.

Honestly? That's the one I look the least forward to since it seems to pander to Christopher's greatest weakness: his tendency to go into lecturing mode. That's fine and even appreciated in appropriate doses, but with all the temporal mechanics I fear a good chunk of the novel will be him lecturing about the science of time travel and destroy the flow of the narrative.

I'll read it and hope to be positively surprised, but my expectations aren't that high.

Well, you might not find it to your tastes, then. By its very nature, in terms of both the subject matter and the personalities of the characters, there is a lot of technical discussion involved. I tried to integrate it smoothly into the narrative, but tastes may differ. It's sort of in the vein of classic Asimovian science fiction in that it focuses on rational, analytical people thinking and talking their way through problems, which is something that I think is suitable for characters like Lucsly & Dulmur, and for the CSI-ish procedural format of the tale. So hopefully it feels like an organic part of the narrative rather than a disruption of it.

On the other hand, a lot of the quantum physics ideas my research turned up are so bizarre and convoluted that even the serious scientific explanations sometimes border on the farcical, and I tried to play up the comedy potential to make it more palatable for those who aren't engaged by the science per se.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

2. The number of characters in the newer novels is starting to give me a headache. NOBODY WILL STAY STILL!!!! This may sound silly, but I have a hard enough time picturing what some ships like the Aventine and Titan look like on the inside etc without having to keep track of so many new characters as well

I've thought for a fair few years now that the ongoing series could really benefit from a Dramatis Personae and a two-page "Previously in Star Trek..." blurb at the beginning of the book. The blurb would bring new readers up to speed, while the Dramatis Personae would be a helpful reference, even for long-time readers, as to who's who.

And no, I don't consider Memory Beta a viable option; who wants to run to a computer to look up a character? And books can go places where the 'net cannot. Having a Dramatis Personae in the book would be a big help.

 

[Tropical_Night]

TNG / Titan: The large & revolving casts can be confusing, yet once I got into them I had far less trouble than you did - and I appreciated the largely non-huminoid or non-human characters in Titan. One thing that always bugged me with Trek was that the majority of characters were always human - DS9 had more aliens than the rest, which was one of the reasons I liked it so much.

One of my major issues with Trek was the Human with a dot on their heads are aliens thing. The Baku was the total take the piss peak of this, where they just didn't even try, at all. Since theres no make up costs in novels they do have more freedom and I do like this idea a lot. Might give the Titan series a proper read next.

New Frontier: I don't hate it. I think skipping ahead a few years was a mistake, or at least something that I thought was less enjoyable than living out those years with the characters could have been, but I've enjoyed the tales we've gotten. I do wish we'd get them more often though.

I'm of the firm opinion that if they ever make another trek tv series, this should be it. Imagine how well Trek would have done if it had been this instead of Enterprise, can't imagine Calhoun making a Gazelle speech..no warp capable storms...actual humor...it would have been fun.

DS9 is my favorite series as well, but I loved the ending. It's my favorite ending in Trek because, well, it has an ending. Characters die. Characters leave. Characters change in rank. A couple is forged as another relationship ends. And the last thing I wanted when the post-series fiction started coming out was for all those characters to come back - it would cheapen the ending of the series IMO. If they came back we wouldn't have Ro on DS9 & Shar & Prynn & Vaughn and I love those characters just as much as the ones that left - plus we did see them all throughout the relaunch at some point or another.

I love the Vaughn and Ro characters, Prynn bored me to tears, I've never like parental drama stuff in the novels, for this reason the Robin-Morgan melodrama in NF bored me as well. At least the DS9 (as opposed to TNG) relaunch settled on (Shar, Ro etc) and developed a proper set of core new characters instead of a constant rotation.

As far as the Prophets storyline on DS9 - that too was one of my favorites. I'm not religious, but with the Bajorans I could understand their religion to a degree because I saw their gods and understood how they could be prophets. And that storyline carried throughout the entire run of the series and was very important - to ignore that in the books would feel odd.

There were some parts of it that were intresting, in Emissary the whole trying to understand linier time etc and that tying into Siskos pain was gold, I think it only got absurd once the Dukat-Winn-End Days storyline started, I know they were tryin to tie up the end..I see what they were tryina do but it was a little too fantisy-religionish for me.

The Mirror Universe I'm less fond of, yet it was a staple of the series that never really went anywhere...and the books kind of provide the pay off for that. I remember thinking they'd eventually have a finale that involved the Mirror Universe invading our universe or something but it never happened.

An invasion from the mirror universe might have actually made those novels interesting. Imagine Kira in ops saying they are detecting a Klingon fleet coming through the wormhole and everyone thinking WTF..maybe there was nowhere to go with that but I think it would have been better than going back to the "no I'M the real emissary" stuff AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAIN...how many times did we go over that in ds9.

Plus the DS9 Mirror Universe storyline explained the truth about Illianna Ghemore which was something I did very much enjoy and had wanted them to explore in the tv series.

I would have preferred an "our universe" explanation for that.

Wow. I can't remember the last time I saw a full episode of any of the series. Maybe five years ago?

I've an incredibly good memory, plus I introduced a roomate to the various series during the summer and watched large portions of it with him.

I must admit that I'm really surprised to hear you're a DS9 fan who didn't like the Prophets, that's a pretty major part of the show to dislike.

Hey I'm full of contradictions, I'm a big beleiver in the humanity can do better Roddenberry vision thing and don't have this pessimistic "lets beat ourselves with sticks were inherently evil and can never do better" view that many trek fans seem to have adopted lately, nor do I subscribe to the notion that DS9 somehow contracited the TNG view of the federation...yet at the same time I found early TNG to be really over the top preachy and I was frankly pretty annoyed at a TV show thats OVERFLOWING with tacky merchandise, DRM, copyright claims etc lecturing me about the evils of materialism and the "acclumulation of things" and the possibility of a largely money-less economy.

There were some interesting aspects to the prophets, but the Bajorans were just an irritating race for me, I didn't like them or care about them. I liked DS9 because of the Dominion, Sicko, the Defiant, the complex grey character of Dukat, showing what paradise does when paradises existance is threatened, what the frindges are like, how not everyone wants to be part of the federation etc....when they had a storyline where the prophets appear and give some vague message to Sisko in blinding light that he can only understand in hindsight it just bored me, then to go back to a storyline that I thought had concluded with that ridiculous armageddon fight in WYLB...it was disappointing.

Kirk was allowed to have a "captain's woman" so I don't see anything wrong with Mirror Kira been either bisexual or willing to be sexually manipulating to both men and women.

It didn't annoy me because she was Bi, it annoyed me because Star Trek has always been extremely cowardly about homosexuality despite patting itself on the back for its progressive messages.
The allusion to reparative theraphy in TNG was good, but in DS9 a lesbian kiss is hardly risky now is it? Even in 90s America its not gonna get you in trouble, any "controversy" is only gonna be good for you. Two guys kissing would have been a risk. Lesbian Kira was..oh is she...maybe ...she might be...were not saying!!!...were just sorta hinting but don't have the balls to quite say...

What is so amazing about a Bajoran being in command of a mining station in orbit of a Bajoran world that is a member (and from what is hinted a willing member) of the Alliance?

They were both conquering empires who subjugated their members, not a jolly federation where the locals get to be the local governor. It went against what we know about the two races.




I have to say I do like the recent crossover elements, tho I hope they don't continue that indefinitely. I heard some utter crap on this board years ago that "oh we cant have enemy x in TNG thats a DS9 enemy" and I always thought thats the kinda thinking that ruins potential for good story lines, I'm glad they showed they all live in the same universe more clearly.

 

[MichaelS]

I've thought for a fair few years now that the ongoing series could really benefit from a Dramatis Personae and a two-page "Previously in Star Trek..." blurb at the beginning of the book.

And not just the ongoing series. Any book with a large cast of characters, even a standalone TOS novel could benefit from that.